The present invention is necessary due to the absence of a simple and effective solution in the digital TV field on portable devices. The prior art presents some solutions to capture audience data on portable devices, as shown below.
The patent document U.S. 60/749,443 published on Jun. 21, 2007, assignee: The Nielsen Company, disclosures a system and method for wireless measuring of devices for audio/visual (A/V). According to that document, an exemplary method provides the steps of receiving media content from a A/V source device, embedding a video overlay in media content wirelessly received and wireless transmitting media content and video overlay to a unit A/V wireless. The exemplary method receives, via a wireless connection, identification information for the hearing in response to the overlay video broadcast, and receives information from the behavior of audience through a wireless connection.
The document published in Chinese CN 101370129 Feb. 18, 2009, owner: Zhongwei Shixum Satellite Tech (CN), presents a system for collecting statistical and analytical data, as well as a method of implementing mobile TV audience data capture of mobile television and direct broadcast satellite television. The system and method include a data collection module, a data encoding module, a data transmission module, a data service center and a module for statistical analysis of data. The data collection module is in a user terminal receiver that essentially encodes the data collected to form a text file. The data encoding module is, respectively, in the service center and the user data receiving terminal for the transmission of the text file with data from data service center. The data service center is on the front of the mobile television or direct broadcast television satellite. The module for analysis and statistical analysis of data implements statistical analysis of audience data for an audience ranking. The system and method provided by this invention are able to automatically collect data from the receiving terminal of the user terminal and transmit the collected audience to the data service center via a data communication module and processes, and statistically analyze the data in service center for obtainment of accurate and comprehensive ranking data for television programs.
The Japanese document JP 2006352438 published on Dec. 28, 2006, owner: Casio Hitachi Mobile Comm Co aims to improve the accuracy of the survey audience rating of transmission for a mobile terminal and protect privacy. The document objects a receiving terminal that combines the information for the audience and transmits that information to a communication device on a network. This document increases the sample survey and thus the reliability of survey accuracy can be improved. Additionally, the receiving terminal displays the transmission choices as the user's participation in the survey of audience rating, receiving a transaction option that the user makes to choose from, keeping the information received from the user and allows a means to gather the audience data collection and a transmission means to transmit the data only when the information indicates the operation of choice user participation in the audience survey classification. Still, the privacy of the user who does not want to participate in the survey can be protected.
The document U.S. Ser. No. 11/075,711 published on Sep. 15, 2005, owner: NTT DoCoMo, Inc. claims a mobile terminal comprising: a) receiving means, 2) means for reproducing the signal, 3) means for measuring the signal level, 4) means for generating information to generate a information, 5) means for transmitting information to transmit the information generated by the means for generating information.
The document U.S. Ser. No. 10/079,435 published on Nov. 28, 2002, owner: Minoru Hashimoto, refers to a system and method for audience research. The method proposed by this document comprises the steps of acquiring the user identification through the communication network and determining the audience ranking based on the acquired identifications.
According to the above proposals, the prior art solutions that use other modules in the architecture to help obtain audience data, usually traveling information through the conventional mobile data networks such as 2G and 3G networks.
The approach that these proposals bring does not provide specific contributions in the area of application of the present invention. Although in some of the documents is implicitly mentioned the possibility of using the SMS channel to exchange messages between the data capture device and the server that processes the data, it is not dealt with the merits of how such messages are built, encapsulated, sent or received, nor to which class they belong.
The approach of the present invention employs an efficient method of using the SMS channel of communication, beyond their conventional standard usage and defined in the standard conventional technique.
As previously mentioned, the presented prior art solutions make a simple extrapolation of what is known in the area of audience data capture systems “wired” to the “wireless” environment. In the context of wireless systems, known solutions focus on using the Internet, which means, in practice, using the mobile data network. However, this solution, which is technically obvious, is not within the scope of the present invention, since it does not satisfy the requirement that the portable device may be captured at any time and in real time to logical reach of the server.
Another difference that is not explored in any document of the prior art, is the possibility that the server can remotely configure the capture portable device. This feature is only technically feasible from the implementation presented in present invention.